The National Live in Milwaukee

“You know, the last time we played Milwaukee there were about 20 people,” bewildered guitarist Bryce Dessner remarked midway through The National’s set to the screams of a packed audience. The National has been making a slow yet steady rise in the collective consciousness of the music world ever since 2005’s Alligator topped critics’ year-end lists, and whether this theater was packed because of indie-kid-blogosphere-bandwagon-hopping or genuine appreciation for the music is unclear and frankly irrelevant.

The appetite of this crowd was insatiable, fed on a diet of 2007’s excellent Boxer, and if anything their performance was an indication that indie rock truly belongs to the masses now, considering the fact that a great portion of the audience looked like the type of guy who would have kicked the band’s asses in high school, standing like tree trunks in the front row and repeatedly calling for them to play “Fashion Code.” This is not exactly new, this Frat Guy Takeover of Indie Rock. In fact, bitching about it has become cliche among music writers in and of itself. It’s still jarring to experience, however, especially when half of the between-set conversations going on around you seem to be the same burly dudes drinking PBR and talking about how hot that St. Vincent chick is.

St. Vincent opened the night exactly at eight pm, playing a 20-minute set of jittery solo guitar and beat-driven music that, while listenable, was just that. It sounded like music that was genetically engineered to be background music for television, culminating in a crowd-pleasing, reimagined cover of “Dig A Pony.” She was charming onstage: “This [is a] song off a record that came out a couple months ago. It’s called Marry Me. Don’t marry me, guys. It’s a TERRIBLE IDEA.”

The National opened their set with “Start A War,” and peppered the rest of the hour-plus set in equal parts with cuts from Boxer and Alligator. “Slow Show” was dedicated to a recently-married couple in attendance because they had “dreamed about each other for 29 years, unless [you guys] get divorced, then we don’t have anything to do with this.”

The Pabst Theater is an incredible venue to see live music and this band in particular benefited from the excellent sound and acoustics. Singer Matt Berninger remarked, “It’s so beautiful, you almost feel bad drinking.” Each of The National’s songs is a story in miniature, and experiencing them live is as much about appreciating the narratives and as watching what they were going to do next. And there was plenty to watch here, from frenetic violin solos to Berninger’s magnetic, theatrical-without-being-obnoxious stage presence. After throwing a microphone stand around at the end of the set, he giggled, “I hope they don’t make me pay for this one.”

What they accomplished, for all of the aforementioned blustering about who attended the show,who owns the music and why the fuck is that guy here, was to make you forget about the who and the why, that if you get your underpants all up in a twist about who and who does not have the “right” to listen to the music you love maybe you aren’t there for the music at all. When an entire crowd is screaming at the top of their lungs along with the chorus of “Mr. November” (“I’M MR. NOVEMBER, I WON’T FUCK US OVER”) as happened during the encore, it’s enough to remind you that some experiences simply shouldn’t be questioned or analyzed to death. The music belonged to everyone tonight, and there are few bands who have the capabilty of reminding people of that. The National quietly (well, mostly loudly) demonstrated that there are more important things to pay attention to.